Jared Olar: Of princes and presidents

Jared Olar

Friday

Apr 29, 2011 at 12:01 AM

The news and entertainment media have made quite a big fuss, internationally and nationally, over today’s wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. But I know I’m not alone in saying that these nuptials hardly seem worth all the attention they’ve been given.

The news and entertainment media have made quite a big fuss, internationally and nationally, over today’s wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. But I know I’m not alone in saying that these nuptials hardly seem worth all the attention they’ve been given.

I can understand Britain making a big to-do out of it. After all, whatever one may think of monarchy in general or Britain’s almost entirely ceremonial, tourist-attraction, figure-head monarchy, it’s their royal family.

But it’s not ours. The Brits can have their fun, but this marriage will have little practical, political effect across the Pond, and none on us. That’s one of the more consequential results of the American Revolution.

Why, then, do so many of us care about the House of Windsor’s marriages? We Americans made an even bigger deal of the 1981 wedding of Prince William’s parents, Charles and Diana, and our entertainment media obsessed over “Di” even though she was a public figure and not an entertainment celebrity.

In part, we pay so much attention to the British royal family, I think, not only despite our political rejection of monarchism in favor of republicanism, but because of it. Though we definitively broke with our colonial masters and abolished hereditary monarchy and titled nobility, so much of our cultural, ethnic and political heritage derives from Britain.

Due to those ties, it’s natural for Americans to be curious about the affairs of their English, Scottish and Welsh cousins. Probably for a lot of people there’s also a degree of Romanticism at work, a sentimental attraction to idealized notions of things medieval and chivalrous.

But I suspect there’s also a bit of a “grass is always greener” thing going on, nourished by the widespread disappointment, disillusionment and disgust with our own politicians and political system. Obsessing on the marriage of William Mountbatten-Windsor and Catherine Elizabeth Middleton can be a pleasant distraction or escape from the exasperating dishonesty and maddening overspending of Washington, D.C., and our state houses.

Not that Britain doesn’t also deal with the political banality of democracy. We have Congress; they have Parliament. We both have to endure political campaign seasons and entering the voting booth with clothespins on our noses. They may have a monarchy, but it is, as I mentioned, almost entirely ceremonial, and the real power is centered in the House of Commons (though that power lately has been migrating to Brussels).

As many political differences as we have, it’s something of an eye-opener to learn that our three branches of government were consciously modeled on Britain’s system of crown, parliament and independent judiciary. It was so reminiscent of the system we’d just thrown off in the Revolution that it took a good deal of assurances to overcome the qualms many had about ratifying the U.S. Constitution.

Unlike Britain, of course, our “monarchy,” so to speak, is elective rather than hereditary, and the chief executive, equivalent to Britain’s monarch, may hold office for no more than eight years rather than serving for life.

Despite those and other constitutional limits, our president is much more powerful than Britain’s monarch. He holds real executive power and retains the ancient Germanic kingly role of commander of the military. The fact that the president holds real rather than primarily ceremonial power is why the Founders made sure his power would have various limits or “checks” placed upon it.

Britain never sat down to draw up a complete written constitution the way we did, but somehow functions with a hybrid system that evolved from medieval times. That’s why they still have a hereditary monarchy and don’t have separation of Church and State or full religious freedom. You don’t get much more medieval than the notion that the monarch has any business appointing a church’s bishops, and you can’t say you have religious freedom when the old social scourge of anti-Catholic bigotry is enshrined in your laws of succession.

I suppose there are many more people in Britain who wish to leave those old laws and traditions behind than there are people in America who would like to make the presidency hereditary.

Contact Jared Olar may at jolar@pekintimes.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.